Do I understand correctly that this just means that military zones will be blurred?

Then how does this sentence make sense?

> Google said on Tuesday that it would comply with the South Korean government's demand to blur sensitive satellite images on its mapping services, paving the way for the US tech giant to compete better with local navigation platforms.

Anyone in South Korea will continue to use Naver Maps or Kakao Maps.

Residents might, but the huge number of international visitors who rely on Google Maps wherever they go won't need to go hunting for alternatives when arriving in South Korea. And the other parts of the Google ecosystem that rely on Maps will start to function in South Korea again.

Apple finally got the green light to enable Find My in South Korea back in April. Before that, you disappeared off the map when in South Korea, at least as far as Find My is concerned.

I dunno if it means solely military zones or not, e.g. maybe certain key government buildings might be blurred/hidden/obfuscated too. The article seems very light on details.

Regardless of what's included in the above, I took the quoted sentence as meaning something like "because Google will blur the sensitive locations, Maps will now be able to provide directions between two points in South Korea instead of reporting 'Sorry, your search appears to be outside our current coverage area for driving'. This will enable it to be competitive with local navigation platforms". How many people will continue to use the existing services or switch over to Maps is not guaranteed, but I'm willing to bet the net effect is not 0.

That's how I parse the subsequent quote later in the article,

> "...oogle would "invest a lot of time and resources" to remove the coordinates of security facilities from its maps."